Europe’s Societal Challenges: An analysis of global societal trends to 2030 and their impact on the EU

Investing in citizens, preparing for a new growth paradigm and reinventing government are the tasks that lie ahead for the incoming European Commission and newly elected MEPs in 2014, to ensure Europe is resilient in the face of global societal trends in the next two decades, according to the report . “We observe a trend of rising inequality between citizens in the EU, which is at odds with one of the Union’s core values,” said Stijn Hoorens, lead author of the study and project leader at RAND Europe in Brussels. “The EU is expected to enter an era of long-term slow economic growth. Therefore, it cannot rely on productivity growth as the engine for well-being in the coming decades.” [Note: contains copyrighted material].